Nevada County picayune., 1887-07-13
AGRICULTURAL.
Farming on Business Prin-
 cipies.

uals about how well farms do not
 Day, or what they never would uav. remind me of one special ln- stance of successful farming Tn
 Germrny. This instance of the success ofintelligent business man, on farms where before him q mum.
 Der of practicable and scientific farmers had failed, has settled
 conclusively tine question in my mind whether farms can be made to pay handsome profits or not; and also convlnces me that the
 successful man must neither be d purely practical nor theoretical
 farmer, but that a practical, com mon sense business head must be his first requirement. some oi The Cultivator readers may say: "Well. that may all be nice and good in Europe, where labor IS cheap and provisions dear" To this I can answer: That Is true, but it is more than balanced by two things: first, by the high price of land; second, by the peculiar way land has for generations been subdivided in middle Germany al the death of an owner and inter- mixed with that of other owners, so that the extreme distance oi peices of land of one farm of say 300 or 400 acres is quite frequent lv as much as five or six miles, and makes the use of labor savln g farming implements quite eXpen' sive. if not impossible, besides wasting the time in going to and fro. But also the wages oi good farn-hands are o.day not as low as they used to be twenty or thir- ty years ago; the best steady men get from $50 to S100 q year and board. day laborers, at harvest time, from sixty to seyenty-fve cents per day, and in extreme times even quite considerably more. Besides. boarding such hands here is much cheaper than in Germany, where beef is in rural districts from fifteen cents up. wards, mess pork and bacon from twenty cents upwards, etc. Now, when l compare the conditions over there with those in America
 the situation IS even very much ln favor of che United States. Nor is success, like the party Tn ques
 tion, the rule, but rather the eX- ception. Though l know quite q number of farmers there who have done well, l know a good many more who, under more favorable circumstance than those descrlb' ed above, have been sitting thirty or forty years on the same farm, where the Lord would provide any how, yet they are not a whit bet ter off to-day than on the day they they came there. They have just made a living, some very good one, but nothing more. That Flu. rope. and especially Germany, has no advantage over this country also finds it's proof in the fact that a large percentage of the German omigrants are farmers, not only
 farm hands, but men who used to own their farms at home out and out. but were unable to make a living, and either sold out before a collapse or were sold out by their creditors. fin the United States farmer has his place clear. nothing is as easy for him as to make living on it; the induStri- ous man will always make a good
 living and lay something by if he is very saving; the lazy man liv- ing anyhow, in spite of his indo- lencc. 1t is sometimes most as-
 tCnishing how much time some farmers have to whittle away at a peice of wood, smoke their pipes or have a talk with the neigh. bors, OF what is worse. go fish ing, hunting or "visiting, <" but how rarely they get chance to do a
 square days work on their farms, Still they live for all that, They may look like ''rag-a.muffins' or scare-crows, but on closer inspec- ton they can yet be recognized as human beings. While it is quite easy 10 make simply a living on q farm, to be really successful or grow rich by farming, it requires fully as much business tact as in
 other pursuits. There as here it is as the saying of the old German proverh which I will try to trans
 late, "How l care, so l fare" ."-G. A Hnntln in Snnthern CnltiNntnr